'Getting Noisier for Africa'

Bono joined politicians in Dublin yesterday to launch the annual UN Human
Development report.

Bono joined politicians in Dublin yesterday to launch the annual UN Human
Development report - and promised that he and other activists were getting
impatient.

"The people I represent - the activists from my community - will take a
very, very different tack in the next few years if these trends are to
continue in Africa,' he said, as the report warned that the rich world was
running dangerously short of time to keep its promises to help the poor.

'This issue is the defining issue of our time and some of us are ready to
really work on it, ' he continued. If necessary, 'We will make a much more
aggressive campaign.

'We are about to get very noisy, we are about to bang a lot of dustbin lids.

The widening gulf between the global haves and have-nots is starkly revealed
in the this latest UN Human Development Report which shows that while the
West was booming in the 1990s more than 50 countries suffered falling
living standards.

The report charts increasing poverty for more than a quarter of the world's
countries, where a lethal combination of famine, HIV/Aids, conflict and
failed economic policies have turned the clock back.

Bono said it made him nervous to hear people talk about issues highlighted
in the report as charity. 'We never argued debt relief as a charity issue,
we argued it as a justice issue.'

In a conference call ahead of yesterday's launch, the singer told a group
of international journalists, that the crisis in African poverty was more
than just political and financial. More here
www.toledoblade.com

And, as the US President undertakes his first official visit to Africa, Bono
offered praise for his promise to spend $15 billion over five years for
AIDS relief in Africa, where an estimated 7,000 people a day are dying from
the immune-system destroying disease.
'This is not just about Africa.' said Bono. 'It's about America and what
Americans want their country to be.
'Fifty years from now people will be asking, did you really let millions die while you had medicines you could easily distribute?'

The delivery of that $15b in funding has not cleared its final hurdle yet. For the latest on Keeping America's Promise, visit DATA here www.datadata.org

According to the UN Report, 'The range of human development in the world is vast and uneven, with astounding progress in some areas amidst stagnation and dismal decline in others. Balance and stability in the world will require the commitment of all nations, rich and poor, and a global development compact to extend the wealth of possibilities to all people.'